01/12/2012

The Catholic Church has established an exorcist hotline in Milan, its biggest diocese, to cope with demand.

Good, because a normal doctor's waiting room with people coughing and sneezing is bad enough, a room of people waiting to see the exorcist must be a nightmare. All of the projectile vomiting would fill the floor in no time.

Monsignor Angelo Mascheroni, the diocese's chief exorcist since 1995, said the curia had also appointed twice as many exorcists to cope with a doubling in the number of requests for help over 15 years.

It's to be expected. As soon as a film comes out about something it gets more popular. When a Bond film comes out the sales of the car and watch see a massive increase. Thanks to the film The Exorcist, demonic possession got a product placement.

Mascheroni said: "We get many requests for names, addresses and phone numbers; that's why we've set up a switchboard in the curia from Monday to Friday from 2.30pm to 5pm."

Heaven help you if you have a demonic possession out of hours. Really, heaven is the best place to turn in that situation.

He added: "People in need can call and will be able to find a priest in the same area who doesn't have to travel too far."

That's good, because don't you hate it when you need to get someone exorcised and you have to take a day off work? And all you know is that the priest is coming at some point between 9 and 6, so you can't even nip to the shops, you have to wait in all day.

The Monsignor said he knew of one exorcist who had been seeing up to 120 people a day. Mascheroni said: "Usually the parents call, concerned about a child who won't go to school or who's taking drugs or rebelling. In reality it's not a demon, but when they're 18 years old young people don't want to be told what to do."

Well, there's nothing like performing an exorcism on someone to scare them into behaving.

No, I'm being harsh there. It's not like organised religion would ever use fear and scare people into acting a certain way. And if you think it would do such a thing, you'll probably burn in hell for eternity.